What is normally an innocuous annual report to the Mill Valley City Council erupted in controversy this week when the chairman of the planning commission unexpectedly delivered a stinging critique of the city's planning staff, accusing the planning and building department of engaging in a "turf war" with commissioners over development in the upscale community.

"I think it would be fair to say that those of us who have been serving on the commission do not share the same visions that staff has for our city," said David Rand, who was appointed to a three-year term on the planning commission in 2010. "In my view that basic philosophical disconnect speaks volumes about the issues we have."

Rand, a personal injury lawyer, essentially accused city planners of rubber-stamping building projects for approval, adding that "significant lapses in communication" have caused "dysfunction" to plague the local planning process.

"I have been told that the (planning) staff believes the commission is out of control," he went on, adding, "I was told, quite bluntly, that staff leadership did not believe in the usefulness of the planning commission in Mill Valley and did not see the need for it."

Councilwoman Shawn Marshall said later that she and her colleagues were "blindsided" by Rand's accusations.

"Personally I thought it was inappropriate and should have been taken up in a different setting," she said, adding that "a couple of us felt put off by the whole thing."

Mayor Andrew Berman did not comment at the meeting, but has subsequently asked for an investigation into the allegations.

"Our silence then or now should not be interpreted as validating the statements made or the manner in which they were shared," he said in an email to the IJ.

Like the council members, city planning and building director Mike Moore, the main target of the charges, did not see them coming.

"I was not aware of what commissioner Rand was going to say before the meeting," he said. "But I would expect there would be some discussion of them at some point. Whether it involves the city council or not, I don't think those comments are going to just hang out there."

Rand said the planning commission considered 21 applications for single-family home projects in the past year, and that the planning staff recommended that the commission approve all of them, giving the property owners the impression that they would sail through the planning process. The commission approved only eight.

"There are no denials in the statistics, but there are lots of continuances and multiple hearings," he said, calling for mandatory study sessions for new construction projects to avoid wasting applicants' money on architectural drawings that would not be approved.

"I have not seen during my tenure on the commission a single application that has not included staff recommendation for approval," Rand said. "While the applicant's architect may appreciate that, the commission might not agree with staff. In my view it is frequently the case that the owner is surprised by the commission's lack of enthusiasm."

Fellow planning commissioner Barbara Chambers, an architect, said Rand did not tell her that he was going to use the commission's annual report to level charges against the city's planning staff.

"I knew he was giving a recap of the year, but knew nothing about this," she said.